Interface

More Keys than Swiss Chese

You'll more than likely want to reconfigure the default keys for H&D. The way they're set up, you'll need want three hands available at all times, which poses a problem if you're using your third hand to download porn. Reconfiguring your keys will allow you to use one hand for basic character controls such as moving, ducking, sidestepping, and your other hand for either the mouse (to aim) or the keyboard. Other keyboard commands you'll need to master include changing your active weapon, searching dead bodies, issuing commands to your fellow soldiers, and changing the active soldier.

Issuing commands is especially important, because it's one of two ways to use your team to its fullest potential. By having other members of your team follow behind you, you can do things like execute a four-man assault, or have a sniper go in with a submachine gunner as cover. It's important to fully utilize teamwork in your missions - no man is an army.

Come on, do the train

Running stealthihly

Smarter than your average rock

Unfortunately, playing in single-player, it's rather hard to control your team via shouted commands. The reason behind this is fairly simple: your men are dumb. We're talking about an AI that makes the title duo from Dumb and Dumber look like particle physicists. While following you, they seem drawn toward any and all perils around, similar to the creatures you control in Lemmings. In the first level, my teammates were constantly either falling into the water and dying (when I went within ten feet of shore), or getting run over by a train.

That is, of course, if they decided to follow me at all. Even ignoring AI stupidity, the game's commands have more bugs than an entomologist. Half the time, at least one of my squadmates would end up stopping to smell the flowers, or more often, run headfirst into a fence. Repeatedly. If they did manage to follow me, they weren't always even helpful. The biggest problem I had was with the "Hold Your Fire!" command. Quite simply, they didn't. Regardless of whether I told them as I started leading them, or after they'd already opened fire, these guys were a trigger-happy bunch. A big annoyance when you're trying to be stealthy (an absolute necessity in the game, since you're constantly outnumbered).

Tunnel o' love

Coming out of the sewer